A Cask of Amontillado?

Probably found in a wine cave, which these days is a perilous place, at least politically. I probably shouldn’t admit to having actually been in one, quite some time ago.

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Dug out the Christmas carol sheet music today, and started practicing. Should be simple and straightforward, but oddly enough some of the pieces, those having accidentals and tricky fingerings, needed work.

And for dinner…pastel de elote.

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Nice Enough For A Bike Ride

Big warmup. Good for walking and riding.

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Vocabulary word of the day: quisling.

Not a nice word, and one not familiar to some younger people, but one that seems relevant today.
It’s actually the name of a person:

Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian army officer. In December 1939, he met with Adolf Hitler and urged him to occupy Norway. Following the German invasion of April 1940, Quisling served as a figurehead in the puppet government set up by the German occupation forces. He was executed for treason soon after the liberation of Norway in 1945.

Mitch McConnell? Lindsay Graham? Will these names go down in history in similar fashion?

Single Digits

Morning walk a little hard on the face, though Pax found it to his liking. Ice is forming and thickening many places.

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Iceboats are sailing and a regatta is called on for this weekend, though not good timing for the Nies/Janowiec syndicate.

In principle, the founders opposed all political parties on the grounds that, as George Washington put it, they are likely “to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.” 

Snow To Shovel…

…and then errands which eventually led us to the Hen House in Eagle, WI, for something like brunch. Somehow, the rest of the day got away, until this evening when, right in the middle of making mushroom/barley risotto, Eric stopped by for my opinion on a sailboat he was thinking of buying. An hour later I had pretty much convinced him he would be making a mistake. Hard to beat a discussion of sailing with someone enthusiastic about it (and also a great opportunity to spin a few yarns). No time for photography, hence this shot from a few days ago.

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Things Being Various

While Sue was in Milwaukee Xmas shopping with Abby and then helping out at Fox Point, I worked on Great Lakes Islands stuff and Democratic Party stuff, along with several outings with Pax. Non-wintery weather, though ice remains on ponds and shallow lakes.

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Caught a fragment of the poem below on one of the episodes of Endeavor (which we are watching at present). Like many poems, it takes a few readings (even one aloud) before it makes complete sense, but eventually it does, and when it does, it’s good.

Say not the struggle nought availeth
—Arthur Hugh Clough

Say not the struggle nought availeth, 
     The labour and the wounds are vain, 
The enemy faints not, nor faileth, 
    And as things have been they remain. 

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; 
     It may be, in yon smoke concealed, 
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
    And, but for you, possess the field. 

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking 
     Seem here no painful inch to gain, 
Far back through creeks and inlets making, 
     Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 

And not by eastern windows only, 
     When daylight comes, comes in the light, 
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly, 
     But westward, look, the land is bright.

D.C. al Fine…

…and poco moto while you’re at it. Another practice session with Irene (while Sue with Jayne). Great fun, good sounds, and the only real problem getting the repeats right.

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After practice, dinner at Craft Urban in Geneva (Sue now joining us), right across the street from the Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva. Incredibly fine food, some of the best I’ve ever had.

All Decked Out

Sue put up Christmas. I helped—by gluing a few dough ornaments back together.

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Wind from the south; chilly, but warm enough for a bike ride to the prairie.

December Morning In The Desert
— Alberto Rios

The morning is clouded and the birds are hunched,
More cold than hungry, more numb than loud,
This crisp, Arizona shore, where desert meets
The coming edge of the winter world.
It is a cold news in stark announcement,
The myriad stars making bright the black,
As if the sky itself had been snowed upon.
But the stars—all those stars,
Where does the sure noise of their hard work go?
These plugs sparking the motor of an otherwise quiet sky,
Their flickering work everywhere in a white vastness:
We should hear the stars as a great roar
Gathered from the moving of their billion parts, this great
Hot rod skid of the Milky Way across the asphalt night,
The assembled, moving glints and far-floating embers
Risen from the hearth-fires of so many other worlds.
Where does the noise of it all go
If not into the ears, then hearts of the birds all around us,
Their hearts beating so fast and their equally fast
Wings and high songs,
And the bees, too, with their lumbering hum,
And the wasps and moths, the bats, and the dragonflies—
None of them sure if any of this is going to work,
This universe—we humans oblivious,
Drinking coffee, not quite awake, calm and moving
Into the slippers of our Monday mornings,
Shivering because, we think,
It’s a little cold out there.

Fine Fall Day

Little wind, and warm enough for a walk to the post office, and then back the long way, as well as a loop around the prairie just before sunset.

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A little workshop work (Christmas is coming), erection of prototype anti-starling bird-feeder, Aerophone practice (11 different instruments for the church gig), and new wipers and an oil change on the truck, which, surprisingly, is coming up on 5 years old.

Email from the Ice Yacht Club commodore, however, letting everyone know that some real ice-forming cold is coming, and to be prepared.